Internship Diaries | Week 3.

3/4 of the way through! Initially my placement felt like it would last forever and i’d be spending my life on K floor of the Royal Hallamshire… But it’s drawing to and end and i’m a little sad at the thought of handing my staff card back come next week!

1. HOME TRUTHS

This week was as long and dull one. I spent so much time at a computer and just generally not inside the lab. It opened my eyes to how much of a scientists time is not spent doing the preconceived notions of their job. More often than not people are number crunching or hunched over a desk rapidly typing up data. Breakthroughs take time and a whole lot of work. Each experiment provides only the tiniest detail in reaching the main goal and this week I definitely found myself loosing sight of the bigger picture.

2. I CAN HAVE IT ALL

I feel like the topic of females postponing starting a family in order to put their careers first is still a taboo. This week i’ve seen women who are doing it all. Their skilled scientists and have boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends and children… I’ve always thought that my personal life would be put on a stand still in order to have a successful career, but I was wrong.

3. KNOW IT ALLS DON’T EXIST

Everyday people in the department are learning wether they’ve been here 20 years or 2 minutes. Nobody has all the answers. The highest up people in the department still take to Google on a regular basis. I presumed that the highest up people would know everything about everything, when really it’s impossible to even know every detail of your own field. Science is constantly evolving and there is still so much in the unknown, that really you can’t know it all.

4. MEDICINE

Dare I say it, working in a hospital has made me consider a future in medicine. Previously I point blank hated the idea of working in health care, but walking around the Hallamshire on a daily basis has made me want something more from my career. I want to have a job with real sense of impact, and i’m not sure I can get that from a lab.

Next week will be my final check in about my time on placement. I think it’ll be a little more wordy, unfortunately this week was a bit of a quiet one!